In one of my earlier entries I mention the fact that I am part of an ensemble of the most amazing women artists. Every Wednesday we rehearse/have class and, more often than not, we bring props from home. Today, I am bringing props...a big canvas bag packed with the following items - a bathrobe, slipper socks, a CD case, a pillow from my bed, a notebook and a pen. The pillow made it pretty cumbersome. The temperature today was around 17 degrees and it was a blustery, snowy day. I left the house wearing my long black wool coat, a hat with ear flaps, a scarf and mittens, while carrying my bag of props in one hand, my shoulder bag draped across my chest and a small white shopping bag, emblazoned with the logo "Center for Health and Healing", inside which was a two liter container filled almost halfway with my urine. A 24-hour urine sample.

It brought to mind a story involving one of my best friends and a ride he took on the 2 train during which he dropped his vagina. Let me backtrack...

My friend Stuffy and I worked together at a pub in the South Street Seaport. We had a very colorful group of regular customers, one of whom was a nurse. Nurse Judy. Nurse Judy came into the pub every day. One day Stuffy asked her if she had access to those plastic models of body parts that doctors often displayed in their offices. She said she did. He then asked her if she could score him a plastic model of a vagina. She said she could. No problem. The following bantor went on for three years, "Hey Judy, do you have my vagina with you today?" And Nurse Judy would reply, "Not today. Don't worry, though. I'm working on it."

One day, well into the third year, Judy walked into the pub as she had every day except, this time, when Stuffy asked for his vagina, she had it! Now, Stuffy had been known to cozy up to a bottle of Jameson pretty much every day and this day was no exception. When he left the pub he had his shoulder bag slung over one shoulder, his walkman plugged into his ears and his vagina in a brown paper bag. He got onto the 2 train and leaned up against the doors. In less than a minute, the paper bag ripped open and the whole thing fell out in pieces. The fallopian tubes rolled one way, the ovaries another. Because the pieces were not presented as a whole, the people picking them up and handing them back to Stuffy had no idea what it was they were handling.

He just stood at the door of the train thanking people for returning his vagina to him, intact.